Travel Trends with Dan Christian
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Travel Trends with Dan Christian
Cycle, Hike & Adventure - The New Multi-Day Movement with Active England Tours
Travelers think they want Stonehenge - but what they remember is a pint shared with locals, the scent of wild hedgerows, and a guide who brings the landscape to life.
In the final episode of our Emerging Multi-day Tour series, we sit down with Will Cairns, Managing Director of Active England Tours, to explore how a soft-adventure brand transforms repeat UK visitors—mostly American retirees—into lifelong fans through curation, kindness, and flexibility. From e-bikes and support vans to clever Sunday tour starts that lower hotel costs, Will shares the thoughtful decisions that create value without ever sacrificing soul.
We also get candid about distribution, growth, and brand differentiation. With roughly 70% of bookings coming via trade partners and 30% direct, Active England is aiming for a balanced 60–40 mix. Will explains how to scale both sides by leading with guides—not logos—and designing themed itineraries that surprise and delight, such as pairing the Chelsea Flower Show with garden trails in the Cotswolds. He reveals why Avebury can outshine Stonehenge for immersion, how to expand beyond the usual hotspots into Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, and Scotland, and why standing apart is more sustainable than competing on price.
We then go behind the scenes of Active England’s operator playbook—from choosing tech that fits your stage (migrating to Moonstride, layering Mailchimp and HubSpot) to hiring for empathy and building a strong management layer as the company grows.
Whether you’re an emerging tour operator or a traveler curious about what makes a week in England truly unforgettable, this conversation is a masterclass in scaling travel the human way.
For more information, please visit Active England Tours.
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My view is that I think organically we can grow the business and double it in five years. And if we do that, then I'd be very proud. Everybody'd be happy. And then that's the time at which I would be looking to exit.
SPEAKER_03:Hello everyone and welcome back to Travel Trends. This is your host, Dan Christian, and today we're going to feature our final installment in our emerging tour operator series by speaking to the managing director of Active England Tours, Will Cannes. Now, Will and I had the chance to sit down live in person recently. He was also on our podcast a few months ago as part of the ATTA Denver Elevate Spotlight episode. And it was a really interesting conversation. And I thought it would round out this three-part series really well because you heard from Nabila, the founder of A Dose of Travel, and then you heard from Lisa Pagat from Crooked Compass. And you have two different exceptional female executives that are running global businesses, one from New York, one from Sydney. And now we go to Will Cannes, who is based, as you'll hear, just outside of London in a beautiful part of England called the Cots Worlds. And he explains right off the top why they've decided to be based there. But their audience is primarily Americans traveling to the UK. And he not only is a veteran in this space, although he only started this company just over 10 years ago, but he has a great sense of PR and branding from his background. And so many of the questions that I get a chance to ask Will today, I think will resonate with a lot of our listeners that are trying to figure out their overall brand strategy in the multi-day tour space. So I look forward to bringing you this conversation. I just wanted to highlight that this series was brought to us in partnership with our friends over at TorCeta.com, which has focused on building the modern technology platform for group and multi-day tour providers. And I encourage you to check out more information at TorSeta.com. Thank you again to Alex and the team for sponsoring the series and making these conversations possible. And lastly, I just wanted to highlight that you can find clips and highlights from all these conversations on our social channels, which are YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Now, let's bring in Will Cannes and round out this fantastic three-part series on emerging multi-day. Will, it's a real pleasure to have you back on Travel Trends. Thanks again for joining us.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you so much. It's great. It's great to be back, Dan.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. It was such a thrill to interview you at the ATTA Denver Elevate Conference. I know our audience loved our conversation, and I wanted you to be back and part of this special emerging multi-day tour series that we're doing. And I think it's perfect to wrap up this series with our conversation because you represent a region that we have not focused on yet in this series, which is the UK. But I know you generate most of your business from the US. But let's tell everyone a little bit about Active England tours. Give us a bit of an overview of the company.
SPEAKER_00:So we run uh softer venture trips primarily for the North American audience. Um, we run our own trips, B2C, uh, mostly guided, a little bit of self-guided, and we work B2B for some of the major industry titans in the active space.
SPEAKER_03:And now your background is also quite interesting as well because you were late to this, which is why having you part of this emerging uh multi-day tour series was uh ideal from my point of view because you were in PR before. So tell us a little bit about how long you've had this company and how you've grown it over the last, I guess, kind of eight years.
SPEAKER_00:So we really started getting motoring in 2018 when I was transitioning out of my old business. Um the business had been going a little bit before then, but with about 5% of my time. Um, we started growing, we had COVID. Actually, COVID, we were okay because we were small enough that we could almost mothball the business. Um, and we learned a lot. We learned about being patient, about being kind to people, and we got our stuff together during COVID. So we when we came out, we were ready and firing on all cylinders.
SPEAKER_03:Now let's talk about the trip experience because over the course of this series I've been really interested to understand the types of trips that Nabila was building at a dose of travel. And Crooked Compass is certainly more of a traditional tour operator, but they take people to really they're they're not for the first-time group traveler, they're for someone that is experienced group travel and is looking to go further afield. So I want to talk about the type of product the offering, and then talk about your customer as well. So tell us a little bit about the product that you've developed.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, we always start with the customer. We have to understand who our customer is, and our customer generally has been to the UK multiple times. Um, most people, and we've studied this and we've looked at the stats. Most people, when they come to the UK for the first time, they'll go to London. They may go outside London. Second time, third time, they might not even go to London and focus on outlying areas. So we put the company deliberately in the Cots Worlds, which is about an hour, hour and a half out of London, that serves as our base, and we run a lot of our trips from there, but we were now expanding into all areas of the UK, including Scotland and Wales, etc.
SPEAKER_03:So when you think about the US market, because it is such a uh a large market, but it's you know, you you have all these different states. When we talk about the actual customer, what is that persona when you think about soft adventures? Uh who are you are you targeting? Is it retirees? Is it um uh affluent couples? Tell us a little bit more about the audience.
SPEAKER_00:It's mainly retirees, if I'm if I'm brutally honest. I think every tour operator is is wanting to garner interest from a um younger audience, but it's still primarily the retirees who have whose kids have left home, they've decided to spend their kids' inheritance, and they're traveling multiple times a year.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Well, so and the reason I wanted to dive into this is because one of the big trends, uh, the kind of the major macro trends is that you know, with this generational wealth transfer that you know, some people kind of put the figure at about seven trillion dollars that over the next 20 years is gonna pass from the baby boomers down to the next generation, they're doing exactly what you just described, Will, which is that they're gonna spend it, and rightly so, as far as I'm concerned, having you know started this podcast connected to my dad passing away, was like spend it while you're here, travel as much as possible. And I'm so glad that so many of them are doing exactly that. But it also positions you and your company in a really ideal state where, you know, despite different geopolitical events that may be occurring around the world, is that audience they're gonna try and keep traveling because they've got the savings, they've got their their pensions, they own their homes, they're you know, they're and they're gonna seize the opportunity. So just on that topic, what type of growth are you seeing? And and what do you think the the potential is over the next couple of years as you address that that market?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, on a macro level, it's obvious that that the the industry is growing. If you look at the ATTA stats, it's 30-40 percent year on year. Um, many more people are identifying themselves as active travelers. Yeah, and active means can mean a lot of different things, and that's fine. Yeah, it's a broad church, it doesn't really matter how active you feel you are as long as you want to do something. So the market is growing, uh, and the way we're approaching it is we want to serve that market with a product that really resonates with those customers. It's based on some very simple thinking, and that's we need to put ourselves in the customer's shoes at all times. We need to make sure our guides are the best, most charming guides out there. We don't actually care that much what their backgrounds are, we don't care age, we don't care where they're from, we don't care what they've been done in the past. We want to make sure that we have guides who are who love people, who are sympathetic, empathetic. They just want to enthuse the customers about our lovely country and all the great things that that are there.
SPEAKER_03:Really interesting. And I guess so on this topic of where the industry is headed and the growth potential, one of the things I wanted to dive into, and you mentioned uh ATTA stats, which you know we did the special event Spotlight, and I actually interviewed a lady from Australia and she was highlighting that uh their company was totally focused on retirees and building out these journeys that are more like 26 and and 30 days. That like and uh asked her in that conversation, you know, who can do this? And it really is retirees only. And so when you think about the product you're developing, one of the things I'm always keen to ask leaders in the industry like yourself is you know, what is your unique value proposition? You know, what is it that makes Active England Tours more compelling than all the other competitors that are out there? Is it the product, is it your pricing, is it the service? Um, what is the marketing messaging that you've found that resonates most?
SPEAKER_00:We want to give our customers the best week of their year. That's our stated goal. And we do that by having the best guide. So I always start with guides. Um to me, it's the center of our business, it's the center of the industry. If your guides are the best trained, um, the most um gregarious, well they're actually they don't have to be gregarious. It you know, we take introverts and extroverts, it doesn't matter, you know, their personal traits, etc., etc. We just want to make sure that our guides are the number one guides out there. That's what sets us apart, and it's our clear stated goal. The product speaks for itself, um, the place speaks for itself. What people think they're going into is little old England with you know cream teas and going into Bath, going into Oxford, going into Stratford, etc etc. What they take away is the weird and wonderful people they meet in the pubs, the the the simplicity of um living in a rural environment. But what people take away is not what you would expect. When people when our guests come to England, I my my view is they think they want to go and see Stonehenge, Bath, Oxford, Lenin Palace, etc etc. But what they take away is something very different. They take away the sights, the smells, the the landscapes of the Cotswolds, or Devon and Cornwall, or Scotland, the weird and wonderful people they meet in the pubs, the people they meet along the trails, all of the great food. The food now in the UK is really good. You know, those are the things that surprise and delight our customers week on week. It's really interesting.
SPEAKER_03:And obviously, I'm born in the UK, I've traveled. My first big trip was a six-week trip around the British Isles after university, and I've only just recently discovered uh cycling as I did when I was at in Chile for the ATTA conference, and it's one of the things I was speaking to other colleagues about where should I go next? And they said the Cots Worlds, you've got to go to the Cotsworlds, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's really interesting. The Cotsworlds is a bit of a hotspot at the moment, it's almost getting to the point where it's a bit over the top, uh, in my view. The prices that the prices are going up, uh, the visitor experience is possibly not what it was a few years ago. Yeah. Um, so we are looking at expanding from our heartland of the Cotswolds into other areas, and there are a number of other areas where we're working now on a weekly basis, which it which our guests love. They love to see different places, the off-the-beaten track places, the pi the places that are gonna surprise them, and going back to guides, they will only go to those places if they trust and love the guides who they're working with. Yeah, so we say to people, don't go to Stonehenge, and they go, Well, we've got to go to Stonehenge. We say, actually, there are places much, much better than Stonehenge. There's a place down the road called Avebury, and Avebury is a village completely surrounded by 400, no, actually one mile of stones. These stones are exactly the same stones that are Stonehenge. You can walk around these stones, touch them, it's amazing. Wow, I've not heard of this. Yeah, it's an absolutely superb place, and it's 45 minutes from Stonehenge.
SPEAKER_03:Well, one of the things about your branding that I also wanted to highlight, since it is active England tours, and one of the themes that you were alluding to, obviously, the um the retirees, this generational wealth transfer that we were talking about, but also this idea that people are so people are living longer. That's obviously which is a great thing, and people um in order to live longer trying to live healthier lives and being active. So the opportunity to take active tours is a big part of this overall growth trend. So it's like, you know, why is cycling popular? And I want to get into that in a moment, especially with it around e-bikes and that type of thing. Um, but obviously you've built active into the branding, and I do know sometimes that there's also the people that are concerned that a trip might be too much for them. So when you say soft adventure, it's an interesting mix there where you're like, you're active, but you're also offering soft adventure. So tell us a little bit more, I guess, about um the the skill level, the stamina level of what's required for someone to take one of your trips.
SPEAKER_00:We don't prescribe a level of activity. Um, we give a guide of what the activities are going to be like, but it's it's our customers' holidays, and we've got to respect that. And they can bike or walk as much as they like. So we will always have a support van available should they want to stop biking for the afternoon. They might want to spend more time at Blending Palace, they might want to sit in the pub and have a pint at lunchtime or a cream tea. You know, it's it's completely up to the guests as to how far or fast they want to run or bike. So the answer's pretty clear. It's it's is it's what you want to do.
SPEAKER_03:And then let's talk about the duration because that's other um the and the types of itineraries that you offer. And I know people might be checking out your website as we're having this conversation, so feel free to reference that as well. But tell us about some of the the typical itineries, your most popular itinerar.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think a lot of the most popular itineraries are our core Cotswolds products, our core Devon and Cornwall products, and increasingly as we move into Scotland and other areas, um, our products north of the border in Scotland. Interesting. They tend to be six days, five nights long. Uh we tend to start them on the Sunday. Perfect length of time, especially for cycling, yeah. We tend to start them on a Sunday because it's actually the hotels are cheaper and we want to pass that that those cheaper prices on to our guests. So we start on the Sunday morning, uh, finish on a Friday morning, and then we could roll the trip into the next week, etc. etc.
SPEAKER_03:Got it. Well, that's clever. That's a really interesting approach. And then so the and then in terms of developing new product, um, as you look to 2026, uh are you expanding into more destinations around the UK?
SPEAKER_00:As I've mentioned before, the the Cotswolds is is is a hot spot at the moment, uh, and we're looking to expand out of the Cotswolds into other regions, so south of Bath into Somerset, more activities in Devon and Cornwall on the on the far west of the UK, and trying to find places that um our North American audience might not have heard of. So, what we do a lot of the time is we'll say, Okay, we're gonna do two, three days in the Cotswolds, so you get your fix of the Cotswolds, but then we're gonna go down to Dorset, or we're gonna go down to the New Forest, or somewhere that they might not have heard of. So they get a range of different places.
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SPEAKER_03:And now back to the show. Now we've talked about product and we talked a bit about the brand, and we've touched a little bit on marketing. Um there's several other areas I'm really keen to get into with you, Will, distribution, you know, trade versus uh direct, but also um looking at technology and so, but let's talk about distribution next. And so what what percentage, if you don't mind sharing, of your business today is direct versus through trade trade channels, and how do you approach that?
SPEAKER_00:That's a good question. I mean, the the it's not quite where we want it to be, if I'm brutally honest. You know, we're about 70% B2B as we stand at the moment, 30% B2C. Post-COVID, our business, like many, didn't have the the cash, didn't have the money to invest in B2C marketing. Right. So our B2B marketing to our trade partners was much easier to to facilitate. So naturally, our B2B portfolio has grown. We're trying to narrow that gap. If we could get it to 55, 45, that would be perfect. But I imagine we'll level out somewhere in the region of 60-40.
SPEAKER_03:Really interesting. And that's it, yeah. I just wanted to highlight something that uh for our listeners, certainly from my background, and which is that whenever I've started with a tour operator and they've looked at my background and expertise, which is you know largely marketing and specifically digital marketing, one of the things I've always been tasked with, whether it was starting at uh G Adventures or the Travel Corporation, was you know they were trade-centric and they were trying to grow B2C. And we were trying to do it in a way that is, to your point about investment, profitable, like to get you get like a 10-to-1 ROI, or make sure that in most cases, and again, I want to just educate all of our listeners in this series because this is about emerging tour operators. And Nabila, for example, doesn't know uh very much about the trade, she sells everything direct. And so when you sell through trade partners, you obviously have a commission that can range, you don't have to give specifics, but it you know, it can be about 15% or sometimes slightly lower or higher, depending on the partner. And if you can get your direct business for lower than that, then obviously, so I would often be tasked when I came into a business to grow direct and be able to grow it for less than 10%. So if you could get a direct booking for less than you're gonna pay a commission to an agent, that was worth doing. The interesting thing on my journey, and and this is where I'm keen to get your take on this, is that you know, even when we spent money on direct marketing, half of the leads that we would generate would convert through trade partners. And they would convert through trade partners because they had air offers or they were they had to establish relationships. There's a whole host of reasons why customers will choose to continue to work with a travel advisor. And most of them, uh, the most successful tour operators, like the large-scale tour operators, and I'll use Intrepid as an example, take much more of a channel agnostic approach or omni-channel, knowing that they want to grow all of the business. It's not a zero-sum game where they're trying to get from 70% trade to 70% direct. The reality is you want to grow trade and direct at the same time, right? And so uh so when you say it's not where you want it to be, and you mentioned about trying to get to 60-40, what are some of the things that you're doing uh out of interest stake to be able to grow the B2C side of the business cost effectively? And where tell us a little bit of where you've had success on the trade side in terms of the types of partners that have proven to be quite valuable. And you don't have to give exact specifics because I obviously don't want to be mindful of the competition, but at the same time, I just think be helpful for our listeners that are trying to wrap their head around emerging tour operators like yourself.
SPEAKER_00:I think the the partners have been great. Um, they will continue to be uh a fantastic source of of revenue and kind of learning for us, an inspiration for us, because we're working with some of the best of the best tour operators out there, and it's you know, we're we're quite honored and privileged to be working with some of these guys. So we're learning we learn a lot from them, which helps the whole business. They obviously want us to be successful, which is great. We have proper partnerships, you know, long-term contracts. It's working very, very well. On the B2C side, I think some of the things that we need to do and focus on content, content, and content are probably the most important things. Yeah, um, it's one thing, obviously, but literally getting our content out there, which doesn't have to scream active England, it can be more generic. We're getting to a point whereby we're maturing slightly, so some of our content is not plastered with our name and logos and all of that stuff, it's much more inspirational, it's message-led, it's theme-led, and we're doing a whole series of different um videos, you know, with fantastic drone footage across the UK. Amazing. We have a full plan in place for 2026, so we're ready for the 2027 season, um, and everything's in it already in the can for 2026.
SPEAKER_03:That's fantastic, that's really exciting. So it's let's give all our audience one of the things I'm I strongly advocate for on our like on the travel trends advisory side when we're working with tour operators is the content strategy. You know, a lot of businesses get themselves pretty hooked on performance marketing, and this was an interesting, you know, pre-pandemic compared to post-pandemic, where a lot of travel companies realized that that brand was really important uh to grow their company and especially content strategy. So tell us a little bit about exactly this. I mean, obviously, I'm intrigued by the drone footage and like you know creating captivating video assets that you can use to market. So tell us a little, I guess, a little bit about the the content strategy.
SPEAKER_00:I think again it goes back to the customer. Start with the customer, make sure that that you're what you're creating is working for that customer. Make sure that we're sticking to our key message about having the best guides. The guides are always front and centre of our content, um, and making sure that it's planned effectively on an ongoing basis, hitting all of our key themes, looking at some limited edition um activities and tours, such as creating a tour off the back of the Chelsea Flower Show, for example, you know, where our our guests will have two, three days at London at the show, and then I'll head out into the Cotswolds or other regions and go and visit all the gardens. So we're quite we try and be quite sophisticated with our content strategy to make sure that we um are surprising our guests, are giving our guests something different from what's out there in the market. It's not just selling a generic Cotswold store.
SPEAKER_03:Well, and even having that content, it's gonna be great for your trade partners because they're gonna love having that content to be able to show to guests. So tell us a little bit about the trade side of your business and um how you're seeing growth and if you are trying to get new trade partners in different markets. Um, because obviously, if you're primarily targeting the US, obviously you're looking at trade partners in the US, but are you also looking at other regions as well?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we're starting to look at other regions. I I think that's um, you know, Australasia is important to us. Um we're looking at Asia as well. We're looking at the expat communities in English speaking expat communities all the way around the world. So we're looking at some of that stuff. I think we have to make a strategic decision pretty soon about what we do with the Asian market because we see that it's growing, we see that it's going to become more and more important, and we see that the Asian travelers are going to want to travel more actively in the future. All the stats are bearing out. We just need to figure out how to get it done in the UK. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Well, and I think that's where you know you look at platforms like Fora, um, which you know is having incredible success, bringing more and more people into uh being travel advisors, and they're obviously expanding their product portfolio. So there continues to be more exciting ways to work with trade partners. There's obviously consortius, there's um host agencies, there's this a whole world that I just want to make sure that all of our listeners know that if you open yourself up to it. So specifically, I would look at in the US market host agency reviews. I've spoken at some of their conferences, uh, their virtual conferences, and obviously Shana and Steph that run that business. I it's one of the first places I will point a client to to understand what a host agency is, what a consortia group is, and then try and figure out what trade partners to work with. And so uh there's long-term growth potential for sure in those categories. And investors, you look at a company like Avoya, which has now been brought up by private equity. Avoy is one of the largest home-based uh agencies in the US, and it just shows you that the capital, and this is where like when you follow the smart money, um, they're making strategic bets in the industry that we're talking about. And the other thing I just highlight too, and I mean we can touch on this too, Will, is you know, when you look at your business and how you want to grow it in terms of outside investment, because the number of private equity uh companies that reach out to me, we have a lot of investors listen to the show. And I'll use one exact example, actually. There's a company called Active Adventures out of New Zealand. Yeah, we know them, yeah. And Wendy, the CEO, who just actually recently departed, they're owned by private equity, and she had said to me, you know, keep me, keep tabs on who we should be buying because their private equity firm is pushing them to make more acquisitions. And this is one of several uh conversations I've had on this front. So, you know, clearly the message I think what I wanted to share and get across to everyone is that this is, as Andy pointed out, you know, an industry that's growing at 30 to 40 percent. And those private equity firms, if they can get a 20% return per year over five years, they've doubled their money. And that's a great return for those pension funds and you know the money that they're managing. And so, in terms of where you guys are at the moment, um, is there any interest in either further investment or getting the business to a point of acquisition?
SPEAKER_00:It's a it's a really good question. Um, I mean, I I I'm I don't want to be the guy who drags the business down. So I'm 55. I want to make sure that there's a legacy in the business after I've gone, and I want to make sure that we've got the right team in place so whoever takes it over, um that the the business will thrive in the future. So I've got a clear plan and I'm very open about it with all of our staff. They know exactly what the situation is that I probably want to be out of the business by the time I'm 60. So I've got five years. Um and what we're trying to do is we're trying to set the management team up so that there are options um for potentially the management team to take over the business or look at outside um purchase via a trade partner.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's fascinating. And this is where it's so important to have these kind of conversations because figuring out a legacy plan or a transition plan and also recognizing so like it's perfect having this conversation here in 2025, your 55, I think, 60, a five-year plan of how do you get to the business to a point where you know there likely will be someone that comes in and acquires the business and your team, like and I saw that recently with the travel corporation where I've worked for nearly 10 years with Apollo coming in and buying that business, and then you know, the changes that uh happen subsequent that are still continuing to uh to play out. And this is you know, this is that the world of private equity coming into travel in a major way, and then uh rolling up uh businesses or spinning them out. And the one thing I've also learned uh too, Will, and you may be familiar with this, is that private equity buys from other private equity. So they hold on to it for a period of time, and then they you know, they they sell it because they've achieved what they needed to um to create value for their investors. Um so that's exciting. And so knowing that that five-year plan, um, do you have a kind of a target? You don't have to give exact specifics like as far as passenger numbers, but just in terms of growth. Like, is there kind of something in your mind that you want where you want to get the business to in five years?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's a there's definitely there's definitely a figure where I think I can get it to. Yeah. It's a question of appetite for um investment, uh appetite for growing the business in a sort of more of a stratospheric um growth pattern. My my view is that I think organically we can grow the business and double it um in five years. There's no there's no question that we we should be able to double it in five years, if not more.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's great.
SPEAKER_00:Um and if we do that, then I'd be very proud. Everybody will be happy, um, and then that's the time at which I would be looking to exit the business. We've we've actually been approached by private equity a couple of times, which is quite interesting. It wasn't right for us at at that particular time. Um I'm not sure whether private equity and is is is right for us and for me in the way that I run run the business. Um and it's probably more likely than a management buyout will be the route that we would go to, but I wouldn't rule out a trade partner acquisition or anything like that. And I know the guys are active adventures and I know that they've purchased a couple of really good companies recently. So, you know, there are acquirers out there um who are looking at businesses such as us.
SPEAKER_03:That's fascinating. I'm so glad we had this conversation because this is where, you know, going from a young entrepreneur like Nabila that is still wrapping her head around this space and someone like yourself that has the wisdom and knowledge from running a previous business. And although you're running an emerging tour operator, you are, you know, you have that wisdom and you have that business acumen. And you also have a deep knowledge. I the one thing you highlighted, and it's something that comes up for me, I just want to share a quick story too with our listeners, too, uh, Will, when you mentioned starting with a customer. Um, and it's something that I I want to just underline that point because for me in all my years at the travel corporation, so Stanley Tolman, who many would consider to be the Warren Buffett of multi-day tours, way ahead of his time. And as he bought these companies and then he fixed them and scaled them, and I had the privilege to help scale these businesses in different markets. But one of the things when we would have our annual business meetings and we'd spend two weeks in Switzerland, and each of the executives would come in for their presentation, in invariably within 15 minutes, they had started talking about the competition. They started kind of pointing to, well, look at the cruise industry, or that uh, you know, look at the prices and the discounts that these other guys are doing. And he would pause, everyone, and he had such a presence in the room, and he would tell this story, which is uh, and I'll just uh share it very briefly, which is that when he started his first hotel in South Africa, and the hotel was more of a restaurant with a few rooms upstairs, his father had one. He started his own when he was quite young. Interestingly, he was actually going to be a pharmacist, so there you go, Nabila. Um, and then he moved into um into tourism. And when his restaurant first opened on the opening night, that he had one customer, and he was running the front of the house, and his wife was running the restaurant in the back. And he went upstairs and was looking at the restaurant across the street that was lined up around the corner. And his dad came in and couldn't find him on the main floor and went upstairs to see him looking out the window, feeling sorry for himself. And um, his dad said to him, You know, son, what are you doing up here? And he said, I'm looking at the competitor across the street, and I'm trying to figure out what is it that they're doing that I'm not doing to be as successful as they are. And he said, Son, stop standing up here and feeling sorry for yourself. Go downstairs and stand next to your one customer, and tomorrow night you'll have two and you'll stand next to those two, and the following night you'll have four and then you'll have eight. And it was this like I enjoyed that story. He told it every day for two weeks, and it was just like it sends chills on my spine sharing it now because it was so powerful. It's like a parable. It was just like, stop telling me about the competition, tell me about what you're gonna do to serve the customer. So I just wanted to share that because it clearly you have that right. And I don't I think a lot of people get distracted um and they lose focus on the customer, especially when they're trying to rapidly grow a business and they're chasing different markets and it all gets far more complicated than it needs to. Bring it back to the consumer. What they want, stand close to the customer.
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SPEAKER_03:And now, back to the show. Let's talk about the customer and let's talk about how this customer is changing and what you're paying attention to. So I'd love to hear some of your other observations about what where you think this industry is headed in the next five years.
SPEAKER_00:I think that the industry is it it's it's in a good place. Um I think that obviously there are there are uh interesting things going on in the world at the moment which which really hamstring certain regions. Um, but I think it's a a resilient industry. I think the general move towards more active travel is obviously a bonus for us. So we're in the right space um at the right time, and I think it's gonna develop further to that in in many different ways. So I think we've seen a general rise post-COVID of more self-guided products. We're starting to see people wanting to have both both shorter trips um and indeed longer trips. So some of our retirees are looking to travel for 14 days. There was uh a tour operator recently opened up a 150-day um trip across from one side of the Himalayas to another. Incredible. 150 days. That's amazing. Um so we're not we're not in that market, yeah. Um, but but certainly we want to elongate and lengthen the trips that we're doing, and for the younger generations is is is pack in tighter, shorter trips, especially for the North American market, because as we know when they travel, they'll tend to travel for 10 days, yeah, which means five days of holiday from work. Um, and Europe and England in particular is is a is a great fit because it's you know six, seven hours across the pond, um, and you can fit in a week's tour and get back to work for the following Monday.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's really interesting. Well, and as we talk about consumer expectations, staying close to the customer, and then also looking at your business, the operations, and how do you double it in the next five years, one of the areas that we should definitely cover is technology, um, because obviously that's critical to um operating your business and also serving customers to make sure that you have not only the right website but also the right uh marketing activity or platforms that you're using for operations. So tell us a little bit about your technology stack, if you will, if like and I'm I'm specifically asking that question because I'd love to get your take on what you build in-house, what you work with partners on.
SPEAKER_00:You're probably talking to the least technically qualified person that you've you've interviewed recently. So this is not my area of expertise, but I I I think that if I'm honest, uh you know, our our what we're doing from a technology perspective is getting better, but it needed to. Um, we have to make sure that that our operating system is as best as it can, is is as good as it can be. Um, and we've recently changed from one provider to another who's looking at the whole of the suite of um of everything from finance through to ops, through to sales, through to you know, inventory management and itinerary builds and all of that sort of stuff. So we've found a provider which we think can help us do that. Um so we're very pleased with that. The one area where I particularly struggle is AI. Um and I'm not afraid to admit it. It's it's it's it's having the time to think it through and taking the right advice to make sure that that we're doing the right thing for our business. We're actually going to hire somebody to come in and help us with our AI stack to make sure that it's it's up to speed and that we're as much as possible future-proof.
SPEAKER_03:Well, so let's um talking about the stack, let's talk about reservation, and I want to come back to AI quite quickly as well. But um, in terms of your reservation platform, I'm just genuinely curious um if you've built that in-house or like you think you've got off the shelf.
SPEAKER_00:We've got an off-the-shelf um provider. Um what platform do you use? Just out of curiosity, if you're just signed with Moonstride, okay. Um, who are a UK-based um company and and we um spent a long time working out who the best partner was for us. No platform is going to give you absolutely everything, but they gave us for us, they gave us more than anybody else. And we tried to benchmark them against three or four different uh providers. Um and you know, previously to that we were with another platform, a great, very well-known platform, and we made some mistakes. Um I probably wouldn't. You shouldn't. Okay, okay. I don't I don't I don't if that's okay. No, no, of course, I don't want to but it's it's I don't want to denigrate anybody. It was more just I just for learning and understanding of uh I mean I I I I think I think that that what happened there was that we were too small for them. Right. And their system was too big for them to be able to do that. Makes sense, that happens, yeah. And we probably didn't um get we probably didn't have the talent in-house at that stage to really get to grips with it. So we were always on the back foot using the system, and so our staff were never we probably didn't train them quite well enough. We probably weren't using it to its full capacity, and there was a sort of a f a flat line of um we just weren't very satisfied with it. Right. And and but it was as much us as the platform being is uh too big for us.
SPEAKER_03:And the ultimately uh the platform you chose, you mentioned about your criteria. Just share with us a few of the criteria. Obviously, one of them for sure has to be the cost of the platform and the business model. Um but what were some of the other factors? Because one of the things that we certainly see is that part of the reason that most tour operators have had to build their own uh technology in-house is that it didn't exist. Yeah. Um whereas now there are lots of different providers out there.
SPEAKER_00:There are a huge amount of different providers out there, and that they're all they're all very good, they all have their different nuances. And so we looked at everything from finance through to ops, through to sales, through to marketing and distribution, and Moonstride was the one we chose because it it captured what we needed most, which is marketing engine activity, which was ops activity, and the and the finance stuff, we've got it pretty well licked anyway, so that wasn't so important to us.
SPEAKER_03:Right. And then other technology, do you what do you guys use out of curiosity for uh your newsletters or emails? Uh what other platforms do you deliver?
SPEAKER_00:We're using very simple tools like Mailchimp and stuff like that, and HubSpot, etc. So we we're using the right stuff. Are we using it to it to um our best advantage? Probably not, because we're growing and we're growing quickly, we're having to get the team in. Because we're growing quickly, we need to actually take a step back and think about what we need for the next five years. Uh, and I think lots of companies in our situation go headlong into stuff without necessarily thinking about the impact of what you're gonna need later on down the line. Um, you know, we're a team of 16 at the moment, we'll go to 2025 at the end of next year, so we're growing quickly. And what we need to do is bring in expertise, especially in marketing, especially in ops, uh, to make sure that we're ahead of the game technology from a technology standpoint. Really interesting.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, no, I'm I appreciate you sharing that because that this is where if you're a great tour operator, if you're a tour operator and focused on the guest, you're not a technology company. Oh, completely. Right? And it's just one of the challenges, and that's why I appreciate you being so uh candid and transparent in your answer to say that you know you but that's that that shouldn't be like that's it's not your core competency. You have to find the right partners to work with and and make those prudent decisions and um and then get the best out of it you can. But the fact is, what makes the difference is the amazing experiences they have, the service you provide, and keeps them coming back because these businesses were successful before technology. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, we're a people-led business, as as as I've been saying, with a massive focus on the guides. That's the company that we want to be. We will get better at technology, we will make sure it's working for us, but it's probably taking longer than it might do for other people because I don't have that expertise.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah. Um, tell us a little bit about the team. I would love to hear about more, because obviously you've um you know you've referenced how important the team is and like the future for the team. Um tell us a little bit of as far as the the team structure, if you will. And again, I want to be mindful about you know how much you share given competition. So I'm not asking you to share your exact passenger numbers and like, but just for guidance for companies that are in a similar stage in their journey, sure. Having an operations department, having a marketing department, or even you know, having people that wear multiple hats. Tell us a little bit about the structure of the team at Active England Tours.
SPEAKER_00:We are trying to. There were lots of blurred lines. People's jobs had very fuzzy edges, and we were all doing a bit of everything. We've taken a strategic decision, probably 18 months ago now, to have people as experts and stick in their lanes much, much more because we were finding that we weren't necessarily making the right decisions because we were too blurred and we were not we were not focused enough. So that's one thing that's changed dramatically. Um, we've now got what I would call a fully functioning management team. We've got a layer of management in the business across all areas. Um, that's working very, very well for us. It's not perfect, um, and but we try and make as few mistakes as possible. Luckily, the people we've got are great. Um, our attention is really high, um, they seem happy, uh, which is most important, and that reflects on our um on our reviews from our customers, that reflects on on what our customers say to us about us and what we're trying to do.
SPEAKER_03:And the other thing I'd love for you to be able to share too, Will, is that you know, from your experience, given that you've had this company now, like you say, 2017, eight years, you've got another five-year plan. Um, I would love to be able to share some of the knowledge and insights that would be most meaningful to many listeners that are wrapping their head around emerging tour operators, listening to this series of conversations, trying to figure out uh what advice they can apply. So maybe if you wouldn't mind giving us you know two or three pieces of advice that was one of those things that what would you have liked to have known in 2017 that you now know in 2025 on your journey that could be valuable for other listeners that are you know in this space because obviously it's it is a community and we learn from each other.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, sure. I think I think be distinct. Be distinct, yeah. Have have have something that sets you apart from everybody else out there. Um, it can be overt, it can be subtle, it doesn't really matter what it is, but have something that you can really hang your hat on. Uh I think that's really, really important. I think for us it's focusing on the customer. That's our that's our that's our reason for being. We want to give our customers the best week of their year. That's what we say on every single trip. I think one of the other things that we found is, and especially after going through COVID, um, is that there is always a solution. Yeah, take your time and think and sit down and think about what the solution is when you're when you're when you've got a problem. Because there is always a way around it. It might not be it might not be immediate, but there's always a way around it. And try and be as calm as possible. Um because when something does happen, you need to make sure that you've you've been prepared in the background bit a health and safety issue or something like that. Um, and so that actually the final thing is be prepared. Leave no stone unturned, don't ever cut a corner.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, that's all great advice, and I think that uh, you know, based on you obviously continue to follow that advice because obviously that like the be distinct. One of the um when I first joined the travel corporation and was in that meeting as I described with uh Stanley Tolman and Brett Tolman, and the um I had recently been at G Adventures and we had gone and looked at Zappos and their business model, Zappos had been acquired by Amazon, and this was in you know their heyday that you know their core values, and we we learned a lot. I had bought the executive team at G Adventures the book uh Blue Ocean Strategy. So we'd gone to Las Vegas and we looked at Cirque du Soleil and just trying to, we even went to Disney and tried to figure out like the best example of that one was actually their fast passes. And this was just at a point when they're addressing a pain point. You know, a lot of startups address pain points and establish businesses need to do the same thing. What is the pain point of your customer? And we realized one of the pain points for people in the uh um adventure space was the idea of deposits that were non-refundable, non-refundable deposits. People hated the fact it was almost like the rewind fee of um a blockbuster. And so we came up with this idea of lifetime deposits. We can't give the money back because we have, you know, we'd be exposed with costs that we have to incur with securing, you know, the hotels and everything else. But we could hold on to those funds to make sure they come back and book with us again as opposed to losing them. And that was a real game changer for that business, and now it's become an industry standard practice. And so this is where things are continuously evolving. But the one part that you mentioned will be distinct, I had called out um learning from Zappos's example, is create a differentiator, it's not price. And I know Stanley Tolman that really resonated with him in that moment, and that's what I learned, and I mentioned that in that meeting, and he was his response was exactly like, and uh it felt it was a great moment for me in my career because it was one of those, like, yeah, what he said, like that's what you need to do is like as opposed to you know just focusing on discounts um and the lowest common denominator, it's like that's everyone's gonna lose in that game. So, how do you create something? Like an insight vacations is a good example of that. It was like business class seating, um, centrally located hotels, you know, four and five star, you know, sell the difference was what uh he would use. It was like, how do you sell the difference? So I really like that you mentioned that because I've seen that from my experiences to be one of the most successful ways to grow a tour operator, and clearly you know that, and you're on that journey. So uh I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, Will. I want to make sure that all of our listeners can learn more about Active England Tours to partner with you, to take one of your trips. Um, so please let all of our listeners know how best to connect with you and the team. Sure.
SPEAKER_00:The best way is probably through the website at activeenglandtours.com. That's the best way to get hold of us.
SPEAKER_03:Fantastic. Well, thank you for being a part of the series. Thank you for being a supporter of our travel trends podcast. I always look forward to seeing you, and I'm so glad that we actually got a chance to record this together live. It always makes a difference. I'm sure our listeners picked up on that as well. And I certainly look forward to seeing your continuous success over the next five years and uh a glorious exit that works out well for you and the team.
SPEAKER_00:My pleasure. Thanks so much, Dan.
SPEAKER_03:Well, thanks everyone for joining us on this emerging multi-day tour series that I've had the uh pleasure to put together, but I've also been able to collaborate uh with my friend and colleague, Alex Reagan, who runs Torsetta, who kindly sponsored this series. And I wanted to bring him in at the end since he's developed a real expertise in this space, and you've heard about Torsetta over the course of the series, and I wanted you to be able to meet him directly for yourself. Uh, and I had a few questions that I wanted to ask him. So, Alex, welcome back to Travel Trends. I know you're on an arrival episode for the first time, so this is officially a welcome back, but thanks so much for joining us.
SPEAKER_01:Hello, Dan. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me. And we are very happy to sponsor this great um episode and the great series and your podcast in general. Thanks for that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, thanks, Alex. I mean, uh obviously we've been friends for a while now, and you have you know your uh core business. You know, you're based in Amsterdam, and um we've known each other over the last couple of years and see each other regularly at conferences, and you've been working on all these different travel applications, and then you developed Torsetta. And I was excited for you because you know my background is multi-day, and obviously you came to the arrival event and spoke on stage at multi-day. Uh, but I'd love for people to hear on your own words about why you actually built this platform. So tell everyone a little bit more in your your in your own words about Torsetta.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, sure. So besides Torsetta, I also ran another company called Zoftify. We built custom software for travel companies. And most of our companies, it it was quite accidental, honestly. So most of our companies were multi-day tour operators. And after building five or six different booking platforms for specifically for multidata operators, we figure out that the functionalities, the workflows, the experience is very similar. And we decided to build our prop our product out of it because not many tour operators can afford building something from scratch because it's time consuming and it's expensive. Let's be honest about it. So we decided to build our own platform where we could distribute this as a SaaS platform or as our as a platform as a service model for larger uh larger companies and provide pretty much the same level of experience when it comes to booking, operations, and customer experience as if it was a custom development, very similar. So that's how we decided to build our own product, Rosetta. Uh we have already onboarded uh a couple of really strong tour operators who use our platform day-to-day on a day-to-day basis. We received very positive feedback from many, many companies, primarily from adventure tour operators, from motorcoach tour operators, and and others. And yeah, we we continue uh uh improve the platform. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:No, it's great. I appreciate giving that context. I think you know the three operators that we spoke to over the course of this series gave everyone kind of a good idea of emerging tour operators. Obviously, we started off with Nabila, who you know very well because you know she you know, she's such a fascinating story. I really want to make sure everyone goes back and listens to that episode. If you haven't already, I mean she's a pharmacist, turned influencer, turned tour operator, and she reached out to Alex and has been using the tour setup platform. I actually thought she's the ideal person to profile that is someone that that is realizing just how much growth there is in this category, but really doesn't have a great grasp of the overall travel industry, and that's okay. She's very smart and she's growing her business rapidly and obviously working with you. Um so I do have a couple questions about her, but also that we heard from Crooked Compass, we heard from Will over at Active England Tour. So we really had a global view because we had an American focused on South Asia, we had uh an Australian focused on like truly intrepid destinations, um, and then we had Will who is focused on uh the UK, of course. So I guess the uh you know the global nature of this business is it's you know it is growing, it is a fast-growing category. Tell us a little bit about uh Nabila from your point of view, because I found her so fascinating and such an interesting interview, and obviously you knew her before I did. So, how did you guys connect? And is she a kind of a good example of some of the clients you're seeing embracing your platform?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. The funny thing, she connected us um probably several years ago when they were just starting out. Uh, and that wasn't for Torsetta in particular, so she reached out to us as an agency. She wanted to build a platform based on a couple of case studies we listed as an agency uh with other operators of a similar setting, but probably a little bit bigger. And that time they decided to go with something else. Um, I honestly don't know what it was at, but that was that was something else, not us. And then the year after, she discovered that she discovered Torsetta. I probably there were ads or some of the references we we got online, and she decided to reach out. She was actually surprised that we are the same company. So she was a little bit confused because initially she spoke to Zoftify and now it's Torsetta and um pretty much the same, the same company, the same team behind it. And we discovered that our platform would take all of her boxes because she tried three or four other platforms where she was promised to get everything she needed, but unfortunately, those platforms were not built for these type of companies. And our platform would specifically cover everything multidate operator with schedule group tours and certain allotments and uh flexible dates need. And this is this is something this is something that was fascinating because again, like initially, um, you know, as we started building Torsetta, that was the that was a part of the agency, and now we have a product, and we start seeing people who reached out to us initially as you know to build that their platform in a custom way, and now they are happy, um happy to use our platform when when it's already live. So, yeah, that's that's that's our story. And speaking of Nabil as well, I think she has a very, very, very fascinating business overall because um she doesn't have a lot of travel experience, but she she's extremely she's a extremely motivated person. So they run the tourists, they do care about travelers a lot, they put a lot of effort into creating and curating every single experience, and they obviously needed the platform that would support uh all across the board because again, like they need a lot of automation, they they want to simplify their operations, they want to have a clear communication strategy with their travelers, and this is what Rosetta is primarily about, because we have a lot of uh options for tour operators to connect, engage, nurture, re-engage, and turn their travelers into repeat guests and repeat passengers and repeat travelers for their business. So lowering their customer acquisition costs, improving customer satisfactions, and and all of that, right? So this is this is our main goal, and this is something that we were happily we were able to help Nabil with. And I'm extremely proud of this case study that you know that we have with her, of course.
SPEAKER_03:For sure. I mean, I think when I look at the numbers and you speak to private equity firms that are interested in this space, I mean, tour operators are expected to see, especially multi-day tour operators, I'm talking about specifically, uh, a 20% to 30% growth rate every year for the next five years, which the reason they're heavily investing in this space is because that means you can double your money in five years. And it's a relatively safe bet because of the aging uh demographic with retirees. And as we heard from Will, his and almost his entire audience is retired retirees. And so it's a very different audience than when we started with Nabila, where we have the younger generation who are also deciding to spend all of their disposable income on travel. And it's so you kind of got the growth from multiple different categories, and it's on a global scale, which I think people got the sense of from this series. So I'm very excited for you and where you've gotten this business to. I think it's you know, it almost is uh ground zero for multi-day tour tech to be able to really capture this industry and this space. Um, I'd love if you wouldn't mind just sharing a couple of details about Tor Seta that would be interesting with our audience for companies that are considering partnering with you, since you're you know kind enough to sponsor this series, and obviously we are genuinely uh friends and colleagues as well. And I, you know, I want to see you succeed, so that's you know very sincere. And I I have a great respect for what you've built already because obviously you and I have been uh collaborating closely together. I've been giving you feedback, I've been sharing it with colleagues, and I've so tell everyone two or three things about the platform that they should know that is unique about Torsetta and you know what you've been building.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely, and thank you so much for this opportunity as well. So, Torsetta is the platform that would support your tour company across different parts of the traveler journey. We even have our own internal methodology, we call it the Torsetta flywheel, and this explains how the traveler moves from an unaware visitor on your website to a loyal customer who books with you over and over again. So Torsetta powers not just the booking process, not just the operations, not just the pre trip or on trip experience, are but all of those stages in one platform. So initially, you got a visitor on a website, they open Torsetta, they they look through the descriptions, they look through different information or data. Points you listed in there, then they could become your lead by submitting a form or by requesting a brochure, asking you a question. Then all of that information gets recorded in the system so that you can later automate the nurturing process with them. For example, if they're interested in a particular tour to Morocco, then you can send them four or five different email follow-ups explaining why they might want to go with you to Morocco. Or they could be they could explore some of the photos or videos from your previous trips, or you might just simply give them a discount after, let's say, four weeks of nurturing them if you clearly see that you don't have enough places uh booked uh in advance. So Torsetta powers at all. And uh our platform is wide label as well, so it feels extremely relevant to your travelers, so it's not gonna be a standalone system. We are not a marketplace, so everything when it comes to traveler data, tourist data, and and and payments, of course, sits in your dedicated instance, meaning this is your data, right? So this is not our data, and we we don't use it in any way. And and lastly, we support uh different ways of communicating and sending out reminders, transactional emails, and support various payment options. So our platform is very scalable. And if you have a very specific request, you can always reach out to our team and we'll be happy to make sure that you get the best out of the platform. And this is this is how we work, this is how we operate a business. That's exciting.
SPEAKER_03:I'm really I'm really excited for where you've gotten to with this business and also you know the fact you're rolling it out at conferences. I mean, we talked about arrival. I know you're gonna be at uh world travel market, which depending on people have when they've listened to this, uh, may have already happened. But nevertheless, I know you're gonna be at focus right, so that might be coming up. But you've got a lot of conferences planned. I want to make sure that people can connect with you, follow up, get more details, and obviously, thanks again, uh Alex, for our collaboration for sponsoring this series. But let's finish with making sure that anyone who's been inspired over the last three episodes is intrigued to uh learn more about Torsetta knows where to find you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. You can always go to Torsetta.com uh to to to learn more about our software. Then you can reach out to me uh on on LinkedIn. Uh that's Alex Raggin. You can find me. You can easily find me there. If you will be attending WTM or any of those conferences, I will be happy to connect you with you in person. Just reach out and we can book some some time there.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Thanks again, Alex. Wishing you every success in the year ahead. I look forward to seeing you again at the next conference.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Dan.
SPEAKER_03:Thanks again for joining us on this special three-part series as we looked at the world of emerging tour operators, starting off with Nabila from A Dose of Travel in the last week when we spoke to Lisa from Crooked Compass and today's conversation with Will Cannes from Active England Tours. I look forward to continuing these conversations in season seven and onwards, since it's such an important part of this industry. And I just wanted to say a special thanks again to Alex and the team at TorSeta.com for sponsoring this series. Now, our season continues next week. We go back to our captains of industry, and we'll be hearing from the first CEO of Expedia, Eric Blatchford. I had a chance to record live with him, and he offers so much advice for entrepreneurs, for industry executives. There's a lot that many of our listeners will be able to learn from Eric directly. And so I look forward to bringing you that conversation. And then we still have the loyalty series, a sustainability and aviation in store for season six. So make sure you are registered on the streaming platform of your choice to be notified when new episodes go live. Thanks again for joining this week. Until next week, safe travels.
